| Coltrane- The Story of a Sound
I just finished reading this book by Ben Ratliff, and I must say it's excellent. Coltrane has probably affected the history of jazz more than any other single musician. It's an interesting arguement. Obviously he affected scores of sax players, both his contemporaries and several generations since. But Ratliff also argues that his group sound became a standard, affecting generations that would include us bassists. I must admit, when I was in high school in the late '80's I had a couple of older friends that were into jazz and studying it and I couldn't get into at first. It hit me when I heard "Chasin' the Trane" on the radio one night. Then a couple weeks later I heard "Afro-blue" from the Birdland album. That's the stuff I started on, so certainly everything about Trane and the quartet has influenced me tremendously.
Ratliff also offers some objective hindsight on the Wynton-Stanley Crouch matter that everyone loved to talk about several years ago.
If nothing else, the book got me thinking about the music I listen to and enjoy making.
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